THE REFLECTIONS OF A SAVAGE.
Morning brings counsel. _Does_ Calcutta smell so pestiferously after
all? Heavy rain has fallen in the night. She is newly washed, and the
clear sunlight shows her at her best. Where, oh where, in all this
wilderness of life shall a man go?
The Great Eastern hums with life through all its hundred rooms. Doors
slam merrily, and all the nations of the earth run up and down the
staircases. This alone is refreshing, because the passers bump you and
ask you to stand aside. Fancy finding any place outside the Levee-room
where Englishmen are crowded together to this extent! Fancy sitting down
seventy strong to _table d'hote_ and with a deafening clatter of knives
and forks! Fancy finding a real bar whence drinks may be obtained! and,
joy of joys, fancy stepping out of the hotel into the arms of a live,
white, helmeted, buttoned, truncheoned Bobby! What would happen if one
spoke to this Bobby? Would he be offended? He is not offended. He is
affable. He has to patrol the pavement in front of the Great Eastern and
to see that the crowding carriages do not jam. Toward a presumably
respectable white he behaves as a man and a brother. There is no
arrogance, about him. And this is disappointing. Closer inspection shows
that he is not a _real_ Bobby after all. He is a Municipal Police
Something and his uniform is not correct; at least if they have not
changed the dress of the men at Home. But no matter. Later on we will
inquire into the Calcutta Bobby, because he is a white man, and has to
deal with some of the "toughest" folk that ever set out of malice
aforethought to paint Job Charnock's city vermilion. You must not, you
cannot cross Old Court House Street without looking carefully to see
that you stand no chance of being run over. This is beautiful. There is
a steady roar of traffic, cut every two minutes by the deep roll of the
trams. The driving is eccentric, not to say bad, but there is the
traffic--more than unsophisticated eyes have beheld for a certain number
of years. It means business, it means money-making, it means crowded and
hurrying life, and it gets into the blood and makes it move. Here be big
shops with plate-glass fronts--all displaying the well-known names of
firms that we savages only correspond with through the Parcels Post.[14]
They are all here, as large as life, ready to supply anything you need
if you only care to sign. Great is the fascination of being able to
obtain a thing on the spot without having to write for a week and wait
for a month, and then get something quite different. No wonder pretty
ladies, who live anywhere within a reasonable distance, come down to do
their shopping personally.
[14] C.O.D.
"Look here. If you want to be respectable you mustn't smoke in the
streets. Nobody does it." This is advice kindly tendered by a friend in
a black coat. There is no Levee or Lieutenant-Governor in sight; but he
wears the frock-coat because it is daylight, and he can be seen. He
refrains from smoking for the same reason. He admits that Providence
built the open air to be smoked in, but he says that "it isn't the
thing." This man has a brougham, a remarkably natty little pill-box with
a curious wabble about the wheels. He steps into the brougham and puts
on--a top-hat, a shiny black "plug."
There was a man up-country once who owned a top-hat. He leased it to
amateur theatrical companies for some seasons until the nap wore off.
Then he threw it into a tree and wild bees hived in it. Men were wont to
come and look at the hat, in its palmy days, for the sake of feeling
homesick. It interested all the station, and died with two seers of
_babul_-flower honey in its bosom. But top-hats are not intended to be
worn in India. They are as sacred as home letters and old rosebuds. The
friend cannot see this. He allows that if he stepped out of his brougham
and walked about in the sunshine for ten minutes he would get a bad
headache. In half-an-hour he would probably die of sunstroke. He allows
all this, but he keeps to his Hat and cannot see why a barbarian is
moved to inextinguishable laughter at the sight. Every one who owns a
brougham and many people who hire _ticca-gharis_ keep top-hats and black
frock-coats. The effect is curious, and at first fills the beholder with
surprise.
And now, "let us see the handsome houses where the wealthy nobles
dwell." Northerly lies the great human jungle of the native city,
stretching from Burra Bazar to Chitpore. That can keep. Southerly is the
_maidan_ and Chowringhi. "If you get out into the centre of the _maidan_
you will understand why Calcutta is called the City of Palaces." The
travelled American said so at the Great Eastern. There is a short
tower, falsely called a "memorial," standing in a waste of soft, sour
green. That is as good a place to get to as any other. The size of the
_maidan_ takes the heart out of any one accustomed to the "gardens" of
up-country, just as they say Newmarket Heath cows a horse accustomed to
more a shut-in course. The huge level is studded with brazen statues of
eminent gentlemen riding fretful horses on diabolically severe curbs.
The expanse dwarfs the statues, dwarfs everything except the frontage of
the far-away Chowringhi Road. It is big--it is impressive. There is no
escaping the fact. They built houses in the old days when the rupee was
two shillings and a penny. Those houses are three-storied, and
ornamented with service-staircases like houses in the Hills. They are
very close together, and they have garden walls of masonry pierced with
a single gate. In their shut-upness they are British. In their
spaciousness they are Oriental, but those service-staircases do not look
healthy. We will form an amateur sanitary commission and call upon
Chowringhi.
A first introduction to the Calcutta _durwan_ or door-keeper is not
nice. If he is chewing _pan_, he does not take the trouble to get rid of
his quid. If he is sitting on his cot chewing sugar-cane, he does not
think it worth his while to rise. He has to be taught those things, and
he cannot understand why he should be reproved. Clearly he is a survival
of a played-out system. Providence never intended that any native should
be made a _concierge_ more insolent than any of the French variety. The
people of Calcutta put a man in a little lodge close to the gate of
their house, in order that loafers may be turned away, and the houses
protected from theft. The natural result is that the _durwan_ treats
everybody whom he does not know as a loafer, has an intimate and
vendible knowledge of all the outgoings and incomings in that house, and
controls, to a large extent, the nomination of the servants. They say
that one of the estimable class is now suing a bank for about three
lakhs of rupees.[15] Up-country, a Lieutenant-Governor's servant has to
work for thirty years before he can retire on seventy thousand rupees of
savings. The Calcutta _durwan_ is a great institution. The head and
front of his offence is that he will insist upon trying to talk English.
How he protects the houses Calcutta only knows. He can be frightened out
of his wits by severe speech, and is generally asleep in calling hours.
If a rough round of visits be any guide, three times out of seven he is
fragrant of drink. So much for the _durwan_. Now for the houses he
guards.
[15] Say $100,000.
Very pleasant is the sensation of being ushered into a pestiferously
stablesome drawing-room. "Does this always happen?" "No, not unless you
shut up the room for some time; but if you open the shutters there are
other smells. You see the stables and the servants' quarters are close
to." People pay five hundred a month for half-a-dozen rooms filled with
scents of this kind. They make no complaint. When they think the honour
of the city is at stake they say defiantly: "Yes, but you must remember
we're a metropolis. We are crowded here. We have no room. We aren't like
your little stations." Chowringhi is a stately place full of sumptuous
houses, but it is best to look at it hastily. Stop to consider for a
moment what the cramped compounds, the black soaked soil, the netted
intricacies of the service-staircases, the packed stables, the seethment
of human life round the _durwans'_ lodges and the curious arrangement of
little open drains mean, and you will call it a whited sepulchre.
Men living in expensive tenements suffer from chronic sore throat, and
will tell you cheerily that "we've got typhoid in Calcutta now." Is the
pest ever out of it? Everything seems to be built with a view to its
comfort. It can lodge comfortably on roofs, climb along from the
gutter-pipe to piazza, or rise from sink to verandah and thence to the
topmost story. But Calcutta says that all is sound and produces figures
to prove it; at the same time admitting that healthy cut flesh will not
readily heal. Further evidence may be dispensed with.
Here come pouring down Park Street on the _maidan_ a rush of broughams,
neat buggies, the lightest of gigs, trim office brownberrys, shining
victorias, and a sprinkling of veritable hansom cabs. In the broughams
sit men in top-hats. In the other carts, young men, all very much alike,
and all immaculately turned out. A fresh stream from Chowringhi joins
the Park Street detachment, and the two together stream away across the
_maidan_ toward the business quarter of the city. This is Calcutta going
to office--the civilians to the Government Buildings and the young men
to their firms and their blocks and their wharves. Here one sees that
Calcutta has the best turn-out in the Empire. Horses and traps alike are
enviably perfect, and--mark the touchstone of civilization--_the lamps
are in their sockets!_ The country-bred is a rare beast here; his place
is taken by the Waler,[16] and the Waler, though a ruffian at heart, can
be made to look like a gentleman. It would be indecorous to applaud the
winking harness, the perfectly lacquered panels, and the liveried
_saises_. They show well in the outwardly fair roads shadowed by the
Palaces.
[16] Imported Australian horse.
How many sections of the complex society of the place do the carts
carry? _First_, the Bengal Civilian who goes to Writers' Buildings and
sits in a perfect office and speaks flippantly of "sending things to
India," meaning thereby referring matters to the Supreme Government. He
is a great person, and his mouth is full of promotion-and-appointment
"shop." Generally he is referred to as a "rising man." Calcutta seems
full of "rising men." _Secondly_, the Government of India man, who wears
a familiar Simla face, rents a flat when he is not up in the Hills, and
is rational on the subject of the drawbacks of Calcutta. _Thirdly_, the
man of the "firms," the pure non-official who fights under the banner of
one of the great houses of the City, or for his own hand in a neat
office, or dashes about Clive Street in a brougham doing "share work" or
something of the kind. He fears not "Bengal," nor regards he "India." He
swears impartially at both when their actions interfere with his
operations. His "shop" is quite unintelligible. He is like the English
city man with the chill off, lives well and entertains hospitably. In
the old days he was greater than he is now, but still he bulks large. He
is rational in so far that he will help the abuse of the Municipality,
but womanish in his insistence on the excellencies of Calcutta. Over and
above these who are hurrying to work are the various brigades, squads,
and detachments of the other interests. But they are sets and not
sections, and revolve round Belvedere, Government House, and Fort
William. Simla and Darjeeling claim them in the hot weather. Let them
go. They wear top-hats and frock-coats.
It is time to escape from Chowringhi Road and get among the long-shore
folk, who have no prejudices against tobacco, and who all use very much
the same sort of hat.